Challenges in Contemporary Youth Culture - Essay Example

Challenges in Contemporary Youth Culture The children and adolescents of today face many challenges especially in coping with societal norms. Norms have both positive and negative impacts on the lives of children. For instance, sport has positive impacts on the lives of youths. The film My Girl features an 11-year-old girl facing several challenges that other youths also face in this contemporary world. In this film Veda who is the main character experiences several challenges such as direct and indirect death, attention, and self-esteem.

This paper explores three key challenges that Veda faced in and one way of dealing with these challenges as a professional social worker. The first challenge that Veda experienced in the film My Girl is direct and indirect death. Direct death came about when she lost her mother and Thomas, her best friend. It was so painful that she even lived in self-denial refusing to accept that she had lost people who were there for her in times of need. Besides, Veda lived in a funeral home thus; she faced indirect death.

Her father used to work with corpses on a daily basis, and she also used to interact with people wailing and crying because of losing their loved ones. That environment alone exposed her to indirect death, and she could not cope due to her young age.Another challenge that faced Veda which is also common among children and adolescents is attention. In many occasions, she attempted to display bizarre behavior just to gain the attention of her father. Nowadays due to the busy schedules most parents have neglected their parenting duties and do not find enough time to spend with their children.

Many children and adolescents desire to be loved and shown affection by their parents, and that can only happen if the parent spends enough time with them. In addition, the challenge of self-esteem is apparent in the film. Every adolescent would love to be accepted and appreciated by his or her peers. In one of the scenes in the film Veda asked Shelly if she was pretty. In another scene, a group of girls teased her for being associated with boys such as Thomas. These two instances demonstrate that at some point she did not appreciate herself and some of her peers criticized her which was a great challenge to her.

The most effective way of dealing with children and adolescents and helping them cope with these challenges is empathy. According to this approach it is not enough to be in tune with clients feelings instead it is important to convey the understanding of what client feels. Regarding Vedas case it is was necessary to acknowledge her social nature and ability to build friendship with other people. It is important to make comments such as "Thomas or Veda is such a reliable friend” without necessary referring to their sexes.

Or generally say that the two have a good rapport with each other. It is also important to help her understand that living in a funeral home was not her choice instead it is business and that someday things will change. Establishing friendship with Veda is also another effective way of dealing with this situation as a social worker because it gives her the freedom to share all her fears and pain that she has gone through for healing to take effect. When people are faced with major misfortunes such as death, they tend to assume that children and adolescents will just cope which is not true.

Social workers must be cognizant of the challenges that this group of youths undergo so that they can work effectively with them.